Vitriol as a result of one's previous political statements or actions is one side of the story. Hate is another. The issue of what is abusive versus what is hate speech needs to be disentangled from both abuse and from racism. Racism does not only involve hate speech. It also involves a) expecting People of Colour to champion racial equality, as the breakdown of topics indicates and b) framing racism as a fringe issue. This is evidenced in our dataset. Abuse, though uncomfortable and uncivil, is a different type of speech whose study may be useful for any number of discussions, potentially on the subject of agonism or counter-speech. Agonism argues that the contestations of the time can be used to renew democracy and strengthen public discourse [1]}. Promising work on recognising an highlighting counter-speech in online communication is already on the horizon [2]}, [3]}.
